08/11/25 Sunshine, Quokkas, and the Most Uncomfortable Bicycle.

We booked the a day trip to Rottnest Island and I hired a bicycle for the purposes of exploration.  Roger didn't have a choice: not yet being up to the demands of pedalling, he was condemned to the hop-on hop-off bus around the island and had decisions to make about whether he could survive the whole day without Steve.

We caught the Rottnest Express, a sleek boat jam packed full of tourists and bicycles.

Private cars weren't allowed on Rottnest Island and bicycles were the default mode of transport if you wanted to see the whole island and didn't want to be restricted to the limited hours of the hop-on/off bus.

There were a lot of bicycles, on every boat, every 30 minutes.  Plus the people like me, who were too late to book a boat bicycle and had to hire directly from the shop on the island.

I lined up with a zillion other tourists and got my bicycle, which I quickly discovered was the most uncomfortable bicycle in the world.  Off I went along the waterfront, apologising to my bottom for the pain it was about to endure.

My ride.  

Rottnest Island had a road around the edges, a lighthouse and some salt lakes in the middle, and lots of little detours to see beautiful bays, go snorkeling or swimming, and explore the remains of WWII installations.

There were also lots of adventure options, like sky diving.  Thankfully I managed to avoid being being taken out by tandem sky dive tourists descending out of nowhere onto deserted beaches while screeching with exhilaration or terror depending on the personality involved.

I stopped off at Bickley Swamp, once a source of fresh water but now a hypersaline lake following mining for road building material in the 1970s.

Rottnest Island relied on rainfall to fill its freshwater lenses, but with decreasing rainfall these were now left for wildlife and the human population relied on desalination to supply water needs.  Visitors were strongly encouraged to bring their own water.

I went for a walk at the Kingstown Barracks and the Bickley Battery, remnants of the Island's WWII use as a training ground, outpost, and gun battery to protect the port of Fremantle.  The 9.2" guns at Oliver Hill were preserved due to the cost of removing them when the war was over exceeding their value as scrap metal. They were now one of the few ramaining 9.2" gun batteries in the world.  Not that I did so, but it was possible to tour the tunnels and guns at Oliver Hill should one want to do so.

I just followed the remnants of the railway line that carried machinery and munitions back and forth across the island.  

Rottnest Island was also used as  prison and forced labour camp for indigenous australians from 1838 to 1931, a bit of less salubrious history that wasn't advertised on any information boards at all.  Almost 400 of these inmates died on the island and are remembered in the Wadjemup Aboriginal Burial Ground.   The island was also used as an internnment camp for enemy aliens during both world wars.  More recently it was used as a quarantine station for arriving tourists and returning Australians between March and May 2020 during the Covid pandemic.  Given modern communications and facilities, I suspect a week or two on Rottnest wasn't exactly a hardship, especially if you weren't sick.

Military cottages, now tourist accommodation,

and the barracks and parade ground, also tourist accommodation.

At Henrietta Rocks the wreck of the Shark was visible, and tourists snorkelled in the calm, clear waters.  The Shark was a hopper barge that broke free from Fremantle in 1938 and drifted across to Rottnest where it ran aground, sank, and became a snorkelling attraction.

I meandered slowly along the only road, sharing the space with the tourist buses and a thousand other bicycles, and walkers.  Throngs of tourists revelled in the sunshine, slowly turning various shades of lobster.  They pushed their bicycles up hills, wobbled along on the wrong side of the road, and executed sudden u-turns and rapid changes of direction.  It was quite astounding that not one of them fell off and no-one, as far as I could see, crashed into anyone else.

Roger called at the precise moment at which I would lose momentum when going up a hill. "Make sure you come up to the Lighthouse!  It's got a fantastic view.  You can see the whole island!"

The thing about lighthouses is they're usually on the highest point of wherever they are, and the Rottnest Island light house was no exception.  I looked at the road up to the light house, and all the people pushing their bikes up the hill.  Then I looked at all the beautiful coastline I had yet to see, and I pedalled my uncomfortabe bicycle right past the turn off to the light house.

I'll come back some day and catch the bus up to see the view, which will still be there.

From there on I tag-teamed Roger as he waited for the hop-on/off bus and I pedalled steadily past spotless white beach nestled between rocky headlands, stopping frequently to look at beautiful views and to give my bottom a rest because I was riding the most uncomfortable bicycle in the world.

Here's just a little taste of Rottnest Island's coastline:

Alrighty then, enough of beaches.  

By the time I go to Geordie Bay I was ready for lunch so I sat in the shade, had something to eat, and met a Quokka or two. Quokkas were one of Rottnest Islands biggest attractions, and the reason why the Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh called it Rottenest (Rat's Nest), because he couldn't tell the difference between a quokka and a rat.  Quokkas are actually a relative to the kangaroo, and would usually be nocturnal but the Rottnest quokkas were nothing if not opportunistic when it came to tourists and food, and were quite happy to stay up late in order to scavange a meal.  Not that this was in their best interests, and the island was plastered with signs imploring tourists not to feed the quokkas no matter how cutely they pleaded, as human food did not agree with them.

The quokkas still tried.

It was only a short cycle from Geordie's Bay back to Settlement where I said goodbye to the most uncomfortable bicycle in the world and took my sore bottom back to meet Roger at the jetty. 

Roger's back had reached its limit so we joined the stand-by line for the 16:30 ferry and rejoiced to be the last two people allowed on the boat.  By now the wind had picked up considerably.  "Hang on," said the boat's captain after the safety announcements had been made.  "It will be a bumpy ride back to Fremantle."

A private cruiser tucked in behind us as we left, pedal to metal to keep up in our wake and avoid the worst of the swell.

The captain wasn't wrong.  The ferry bounced and rolled, sheets of salt water spraying over us passengers clinging grimly to poles and seats on the back deck.  Little children hooted and howled with delight as their parents juggled keeping everyone upright and on board.  Everyone was deliciously thilled, soaked with sea spray, and no-one was sick because we all had other things to think about.

The private cruiser provided huge amounts of entertainment and opportunities for collective gasps and cheers as he ploughed along in our wake.

Back in Fremantle we wandered home, ditched our sodden clothes and showered off the salt spray.  Roger retired to rest his back, Steve sulked because he had been left at home all day, and I reluctantly began thinking about work which loomed ever closer on my horizon.

It was a fantastic day.

Home for a week(ish): Jaylu Flats, Fremantle.